Inner Battles
"He was the love of my life and you took him away from me. You bastard, I wish someone would take away from you the thing that you love the most and destroy it, so you suffer as much as I do now!", an angry woman shouted at Batman, her words resounding in the night like sharp blades. Then exhausted by her emotional outburst, she crumbled and began to cry while the police took her away.
As usual, Batman didn't linger in the scene. Nevertheless, for some reason the words of the woman still echoed in his mind when he arrived at the cave. How many times have criminals have cursed him? Countless, and if anything, he is by now indeed, cursed, perhaps he has been that way since he was 8 years old.
As a way to clear his mind from that feeling, he started to type a report on the recent events: A despicable drug dealer with more deaths on his account that anyone care to remember, has just died in a cross fire between gangs that inadvertently were found by detective Ramirez and her partner, detective Allen, both of them handpicked by Jim Gordon. The drug lord was trying to kill detective Ramirez when Batman arrived, just in time to deflect the fatal bullet with a batarang.
Full of fear of the bat's wrath, the drug dealer made a fatal mistake, in his mad run to get away from Batman he didn't realise a shattered sharp glass was lying just a few inches from him, and he impaled himself. However, in the eyes of the woman who ran from her hideout to aid him, Batman was guilty of his dead. He could see how something broke beyond repair inside of her as she cradled the dead corpse in her arms, and then she replaced the sorrow with a deep hate for him.
He understood the feeling, even as twisted as the love interest of that woman was. God knows he had been in love and even now despite his best intentions to avoid the feeling; he was in love, dangerously in love. He could not help but to think how often people yearn to find their one and true love, but do they really know what they are asking for? Have a definite love is not easy, and even least is you are Batman and Bruce Wayne.
As lately when he was in complete solitude, his mind played tricks on him and drift to her, unleashing his eternal inner struggle: he wish to let her go and every fibber of him wants to run away from her, but his heart has a will of its own and has decided to stay, no matter how irrational or illogical. As painful as it is for him to acknowledge, this was not a mere infatuation, he will love her until his last dying breath, and there is not turning back. Because every time he sees her a painful, raw, potent and devouring feeling that consumes all takes over him.
Most of the times, he has the feeling under control, but often his own unresolved desires surface, and he cannot help but to show how much he cares for her. These slips are more frequent now, and she appears to have taken notice, even besides his multiple efforts to hide them.
The report was still in the first paragraph when a beep from his comm link pulls him out of these inner thoughts, and then a familiar voice calls him, they need him for another mission with the Justice League.
"ETA in 5 minutes. Batman out"
His inner battle is useless, his heart will not let her go, and as soon as he realises that the devouring feeling takes over him just because his princess is waiting for him, and the ghost of a smile appears on his lips.